Customer Reviews
Fails to live up to its ambitions - By: Ashleigh, 07 Jul 2007 
I had high hopes for this film. A lot of people consider it to be John Woo's masterpiece & I agree that it is one of his more ambitious projects that I have saw.
The story is sweeping, dark & epic. It involves 3 friends from Hong Kong who un away to Saigon in the middle of the Vietnam war to make their fortune & hide from the police who are after them. It is a dark story about war, friendship, greed & betrayal. On paper, this sounds amazing.
The acting is very hit & miss. Tony Leung, as always, plays his part magnificently. In some scenes his face is so expressive that my heart ached for him. Former pop star Jackie Cheung has his first properly dramatic role & he reallly tries hard with it. Unfortunately, some poor plotting lets him down.
There is one scene which should be very affecting & Jackie Cheung plays it so well. Fai is being forced by his captors to murder fellow prisoners & is screaming & sobbing that he doesn't want to kill anyone. Unfortunately, while watching this scene I couldn't help but think, "Hold on, you were happily slaughtering people left & right ten minutes ago!"
I think this film has a lot of potential but for many little reasons it just doesn't work. The final scene had me laughing out loud & I reallly don't think that was John Woos intention.
It's not a bad film & there are some great scenes but please don't watch this thinking it's John Woo's overlooked masterpiece or you will be disappointed.
John Woo loses the plot - By: Trevor Willsmer, 07 Nov 2006 It's a common belief that John Woo lost his way when he moved to Hollywood, but in truth his career was always highly erratic even in his Hong Kong days. For every Better Tomorrow or The Killer on his resume there's at least one disappointment on the level of Bullet in the head.
On paper Bullet in the Head looks like John Woo's most ambitious & under-rated film, but sadly it turns out to be an entirely derivative & largely ineffective shoot-em-up that blows its few good ideas in alll the overkill. There's the germ of a good idea in its sprawling tale of three friends who skip the rioting Hong Kong of 1967 to make their fortune in the chaos of Vietnam, but it's quickly lost amid the cartoon carnage - this is the kind of film where Woo will add a bomb disposal man having his arms blown off to the background of a romantic parting, & that's one of the more subtle scenes. Clunking construction & wild leaps of logic abound (it's hard to take Jacky Cheung's cries of "Don't make me commit murder!" seriously after we've just seen him gun down thirty people) & the tragedy of Vietnam is reduced to the level of a video game in several over the top & largely uninvolving action scenes.
There are a few mildly effective moments, such as Simon Yam's memorable introduction, but the lasting impression is of a hack who has seen The Deer Hunter & The Killing Fields several times without ever reallly understanding them. Horrendously disappointing. No misjudged underappreciated lost masterpiece, just a mess.
The 2-disc UK DVD is packed with reverential features, although it's often hard to reconcile the great claims made with the film itself.
You May Want To Put A Bullet In Your Own Head After Watching This Film (sad sad film) But Great... - By: SILENT_TEAR, 22 Sep 2006 
Over the top doesn't even begin to describe John Woo's Bullet in the Head. His famed 1990 Vietnam war epic possesses the usual John Woo signifiers: male protagonists, trials of friendship, displays of honor, homoerotic male bonding, & two-gun action. It also possesses extreme histrionics, nearly comical emotional extremes, & characters who are so typified that they threaten to become cartoons. And it's depressing as alll hell. But despite alll that--or perhaps even because of it--Bullet in the Head succeeds. This is a film so emotionallly draining & intensely powerful that it can't help but affect.
Ben (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai), Frank (Jacky Cheung) & Paul (Waise Lee) are three longtime buddies who cruise the streets of Hong Kong circa 1967 like rejects from West Side Story. Defiant & proud, they're also fiercely loyal to their families & each other, & will engage in street fisticuffs & other assorted lengths to prove it. When Ben decides to marry girlfriend Jane (Fennie Yuen), Frank & Paul secure a loan to pay for the wedding banquet, but Frank is attacked by the local gang. Bloodied, he still arrives at the banquet with the money, but Ben isn't satisfied with letting things go. He goes after the responsible parties, & accidentallly leaves one dead--and this is ON his wedding night.
With the law after him, Ben is forced to flee, & hightails it to Saigon with his two buddies. The three are supposed to deliver some illegal goods to a Mr. Leong (Lam Ching), but things quickly go awry. The goods are lost in a terrorist bombing, & protesters & North Vietnamese sympathizers are shot without pity. Luckily, they have a contact: Eurasian mercenary Luke (Simon Yam in the Chow Yun-Fat role), who's so damn cool that he kills with flair, smokes cigars like a man, & still manages to romance the ladies. Luke helps the boys square things with Mr. Leong, but they're not satisfied with just completing their deal. Ben wants to free Sallly (Yolinda Yan), a former HK singer who now "belongs" to Leong, & Paul wants a case of gold leaf that Mr. Leong possesses. Together, the four stage a daring raid on Mr. Leong's club that's vintage John Woo, complete with two-gun action, slow-motion explosions & lots & lots of blood. But things get worse. Quickly.
In John Woo's heroic bloodshed classics, hell is a swamp his characters are forced to wade through. His typical heroes have been honorable crooks beset by treachery & corruption from those they trusted. They find strength in friendship & brotherhood, & rise above their underdog positions simply because they're so fiercely loyal & honorable. The results may sometimes be tragic, but the characters remain true to their personal codes. All forms of authority--the law, the mob, & even society--are secondary to the personal bond between two individuals (usuallly men) & nothing is worth the cost of betraying that bond. It's cinematic homoeroticism at its best, & Woo has visited that theme again & again. To some, that's what makes him John Woo.
But Bullet in the Head doesn't alllow its characters the opportunity to survive hell. Instead of honor & friendship redeeming the characters, they're ultimately twisted & destroyed by the stark realities of their worlds. Ben is the romantic dreamer who wants to save the girl, honor his friends, & do the right thing. Frank is the ultra-loyal pal who will do anything & everything to help & protect his buddies. And Paul is the friend who is initiallly honorable, but gives into his darker side when presented with the opportunity to get ahead. In other John Woo films, the two remaining buddies would band together to give the betrayer his, demonstrating that honor triumphs over whatever odds exist. Not in Bullet in the Head. Things don't get better for Ben & Frank. Their sojurn through Vietnam becomes a vacation of horror which could destroy everything they're about. To put it simply...IT ALL GOES TO HELL.
What John Woo was attempting with Bullet in the Head is anybody's guess, but the pieces are plainly there. With 1997 bearing down on Hong Kong, John Woo wrote & directed a film about the system of power corrupting even that which is most sacred (i.e., brotherhood). Political unrest is everywhere, authority punishes the innocent, & personal greed destroys even the most generous. Despite the characters wanting to live up to their personal codes, they find they can't. Things that are larger eventuallly do them in, & the sacrifices they make cannot be redeemed. We get lots of action, lots of homoerotic emoting, & lots of sappy wipes, dissolves & fades, but there is no justice in Bullet in the Head. If there's a lesson to be learned here, it's this: everything reallly, reallly sucks. It would be better to stay in bed under the covers then venture out into the world.
With that sort of pessimism, it's no wonder the film was coldly received. It possesses some wonderfully raw emoting from Tony Leung & Jacky Cheung, & a generous dose of coolness from Simon Yam, but the excess that's displayed is beyond real. Overacting is practicallly required in John Woo's hyperrealistic world, & everyone follows suit. Tony Leung looks like he's going to implode in nearly every other scene, & Jacky Cheung's ultimate self-destruction is rendered in the most histrionic strokes possible. Both overacting jobs are in the service of a greater whole: a film which relates a parable by overdoing the familiar in ways which both attract & repel. Both Ben & Frank are characters so inherently worth caring about that even their bad deeds (killing is just not cool) are forgivable. Paul's descent into self-rationalization & greed makes him seem like cartoon character, but the sordid emotions which drive him are alll too familiar. Even though the characters seem unreal (Most of John Woo's characters are.), & the film is patently unrealistic (Cool two gun action in wartorn Vietnam!), there is something very real at the film's core. The characters operate off the most basic human emotions, both good & bad, & that is what makes them so ultimately compelling.
Granted, this is not a film for everyone. The emotional excess & obvious directoral conceits have been sneered at by more than a few cinemaphiles, & the whole thing could be seen as a pretentious lesson bestowed upon Hong Kong by Mr. John Woo. Bullet in the Head wears everything on its sleeve & pulls no punches. It's doubtless that some individuals would start to squirm when trapped in theater for two-plus hours with this film unspooling in front of them (one critic once callled it "vile, but felt"). Plus, the whole thing is so depressing that a bullet to the head might feel like a good way to go lol This is one sad, sad movie & its emotional extremes can easily alienate. But everything about it is so overwrought & over-the-top that it alll strangely works. In the end, this is a movie that doesn't just stick to your gut--it pretty much crawls in there & nestles in for a long, long gnaw on your insides. If movies are supposed to enrage, upset & affect then Bullet in the Head gets perfect marks. You may not go home with warm fuzzies, but you'll go home with something. And how many movies can reallly do that can they?
BRILLIANT..1 OF THE BEST FILMS - By: Ali (DA Film GENIOUS), 16 May 2005 SUPERB...ONE OF THE BEST FIlMS IVE EVER SEEN...
VIOLENECE..HARD HITTING....GRIPPING...EMOTIONAL AND A ROOLER COASTER RIDE OF ACTION
Shocking, engaging and very exciting - By: S. Yaqub, 07 Apr 2005 This movie is definitely one of John Woo's standout films of his long career. It features Tony Leung (Infernal Affairs), Waise Lee & Jacky Cheung on blistering form as three friends who flee to Saigon during the Vietnam war & try to make money from selling illegal goods, but soon are forced to make a choice based upon loyalty, friendship or wealth. Good action (not as stylish as 'The Killer') but is more realistic & brutal. Simon Yam also stars as Luke, a Eurasian hitman who helps the three make their money. Not for the faint hearted.
